It's a lot easier, the second time around.

Jaeger is still working like a well-oiled machine – complete with the impersonal detachment of pistons and gears – but I'm able to better keep up with his mechanical work. All the teething troubles I found when I first started out up north have disappeared, and I'm faster than ever before at identifying what would lead to valuable information and what would lead to me returning to Jaeger with my tail between my legs and nothing to show for my endeavours.

The work itself is largely the same. It's still about going out and following leads, looking for suspicious people or places that Cinderblock's gang already knows are linked to the Triad. I find them, I follow them, and I follow the leads they lead me to. It's the same secret rooms full of weapons, stashes of drugs hidden behind fake walls and even completely innocuous bars or laundromats that hide quiet corners and backroom meeting places used by the Triad's members to wind down after a hard night's work.

Where there are differences, they come from the location. The dynamic is a lot louder, here in the South. This part of the city is home to many more gangs than the North, even if they're individually much smaller, and each one of them has either picked a side or been forced to pick. It means that the Triad and the Elite are competing for space in a subtle war conducted beneath the noses of the ever-patrolling police and PRT. It's a war fought by tags spray-painted onto street corners, in flashes of light blue or crimson worn on a person's clothing to show their allegiance.

In brief but violent volleys of gunfire delivered from moving cars, firebombs through the windows of stores that pay protection to those who can't protect them, or ambushes as people are walking down the street, leaving them to bleed out as their attacker blends back into the crowd. Where there are Cape fights, they're usually ambushes by two Capes against one, or one Cape going out to stamp down anyone who's wearing their colours a little too openly.

I've seen more of the Protectorate, too. I'd be hard-pressed not to see them, with the way they fly over the streets in brightly-coloured spandex, or weave through traffic on bulky motorcycles with flashing green and white lights. I even catch a glimpse of a raid in the distance – a whole block lit up by flashing lights as the city's hired heroes and their armoured soldiers storm the hideout of some Cape or another.

It's like the eyes of the entire city have been turned on these few districts; everyone knows that something big is happening here and it's got the air so thick with tension that you could cut it with a knife. I feel like I'm working under a floodlight, forced to scrabble for whatever shadows I can find to stay out of sight of the multitude of eyes that are staring down at us.

And yet, it feels like I'm the only member of our little group who understands it. Jaeger is still as single-mindedly meticulous as ever, building up an increasingly worrying picture out of the intelligence I bring him, while Huntsman seems content to idle away his time reading some trashy novel in the safehouse, his hound curled up by his side. The only one of them who might get it is Cinderblock, and that's only because he keeps getting dragged away to deal with some issue or another around his gang.

I'm getting better at understanding people, just like I'm getting better at hunting through places. Huntsman helps with that; out of everyone there, he's the one who's happiest to just talk in the brief windows between my scouting and sleep. He asked a lot of questions about my power – how it works and where it doesn't work. I'd say he's being suspicious, but he was just as eager to question the others and even to explain the details of his own power.

Turns out 'Duke' isn't actually real, which is a relief. I had started to wonder if the hound was an even worse off monstrous cape than me, but Huntsman explained that Duke is more like a projection he's constantly maintaining, and he can even reform Duke if he's ever destroyed – though it takes a while.

It quickly becomes obvious that we're the linchpins of this whole operation. I'm supposed to find a container before it gets loaded onto a ship, but Huntsman is the one who'll help us find that ship. He can give Duke some small part of a person – a bead of blood, a scrap of dead skin, a single stray hair – and track them indefinitely, no matter how they hide. The only thing that'll stop the trace is if Duke is destroyed, or if Huntsman decides he wants to follow someone else instead.

Cinderblock and his gang are our muscle in case something goes wrong while we're investigating, though we'll be getting a much bigger force when we actually find the ship in question. He's well suited to it, being able to harden his skin to the texture of concrete – kind of like Ember's ashen Breaker state – and pull more concrete right off the street to add to his mass.

Jaeger… well, Jaeger's power makes an awful amount of sense. It took a lot of subtle coaxing from Huntsman – and an appeal to Jaeger's tactical sense – before he opened up. He sees the world through angles and trajectories, his power granting him an inherent understanding of ballistics. It's why I've never seen him without a gun, and it's also what's shaped that philosophy of his.

He hated Bloody Mary because she relied on her power to make herself an effective killer, but Jaeger has a killer's power as well. The difference between the two is that Jaeger is ambitious. He doesn't want to be just a killer, which is why he's trained up his private army and worked hard to raise himself up in the hierarchy of the Seattle Elite. He doesn't have Huntsman's power to sniff out a target, so he teaches himself to use maps and analysis to achieve the same result, even though Huntsman could do better without even thinking.

No wonder he views his humanity as something to be overcome.

I guess I'm lucky, in that regard. I'm a lot more like Huntsman than Jaeger – content in my work and happy enough so long as I'm safe. My power helps, in that regard. I don't need to throw myself into the fight like Cinderblock, and my power matches up with my lifestyle so I'm not constantly struggling to keep up with my ambition like Jaeger. I don't even really have any ambitions, if I'm being honest with myself. Unless 'good food, good people and a good place to sleep' counts.

Ever since I woke up, all I wanted was safety, and after my failed attempt to find it with Mike I'm happy with what I have right now. I'm happy working from the shadows, happy sharing a home with Ember and barely talking to anyone else in the world. I'm even happy with the work the Elite has me doing, for all that it can be scary and sad at times.

I see the worst of people, but I'm kept safe from them in the shadows. I'm not fully part of their world, with its guns and bombs and Capes, I just skirt around its edges.

If I was part of the world, this nightclub would probably terrify me. It's packed full of people, throwing themselves against each other and writhing together like they're nothing more than parts of some great mindless beast, a huge and terrifying animal brought to a frothing rage by the head-pounding music and the horrific strobing pattern of the lights that seems so much worse than a steady glow.

There's no way a club like this would be at capacity in the disputed territory, which means my host for the night has taken me away from the brewing gang war. Hopefully, the diversion bears fruit. He's certainly not here to dance – edging his way around the dance floor rather than fully part of it, my hiding spot beneath his unzipped sports jacket giving me brief glimpses of the thronging crowd before another burst of strobes drives me back into hiding.

He's not going to the bar, either, else I'd feel his weight shifting and see the ground out the bottom of his jacket as he sits down. He keeps pushing his way through, his pace picking up as he walks through the crowd before stopping entirely as he shakes hands with someone. Probably a bouncer, or some other security person. Whoever they are, they don't stop my host for long, and mere moments later the sound of the club is cut off with the click of a door closing.

I didn't pick the man at random, but finding him was a stroke of luck.

Huntsman and Cinderblock have been teaching me a little about how gang networks tend to operate; giving context to all the information Jaeger had me gathering the last time around. They explained the concept of dealers and suppliers, how each gang's hierarchy is organised so that you might have a core of key members loosely directing hangers on and affiliates.

Cinderblock even explained the idea of a burner phone; a cheaper telephone for use solely when conducting business, with the idea that you have less to lose if you have to destroy it, or if it falls into the wrong hands. He showed me his – a comparatively simplistic thing with a tiny screen and obvious buttons, smaller than the black mirror-like devices I occasionally pass in shop windows.

He explained that most are bought so cheaply that they don't have a passcode lock, with the idea being that the main security of a burner phone comes from the fact the owner can keep it close at hand. Like a lot of ideas I've been told, I've found it doesn't necessarily hold up in reality.

People forget about things. It's the kind of thing I can't help noticing with the amount of time I spend crawling under couches, through stacked garbage sacks, sewer lines, down the sides of ovens and in all the other places people don't care to look. Not that people leave their phones in those places, of course. But leaving it on the kitchen island while you go answer the door is just as good, when someone's watching from underneath the fridge. Not even the inside pocket of a jacket is safe, when I can creep up in there and partially form my fingers to lift the phone right out of their pocket.

The funny thing about people is that they can spend ten minutes turning the room over, looking anywhere and everywhere for their phone, only to perfectly accept the 'fact' that it's been sitting partially-hidden beneath the empty fruit bowl the whole time, right under their very noses. Meanwhile I've memorised the few numbers in their contact list, and I'm on my way back to the apartment to compare them with the other numbers of all the phones I've lifted.

Another fun thing about people – particularly gang people – is that there are only so many numbers they need or want to keep on their burners. They can fill their personal phone with every number under the sun, but the whole point of a burner is that it's only for work-related numbers. Maybe a dozen, at the most. More for the people higher up in the chain, or dealers.

The trick, Huntsman was all-too-happy to explain to me, is to look for the repeated numbers. A poison dealer could have a score of customers on call, each one of them with their own phone number, but it's rare for a customer to use two dealers, even ones from the same gang, so those numbers tend to be unique to one phone.

The numbers that repeat are the ones from higher up the chain. The 'lieutenants,' 'fixers' and 'enforcers' whose job is to keep the wheels of the operation turning, corralling the gang's enthusiastic hangers-on into something that's useful for the gang's core members. But the Triad isn't really one gang, it's dozens. A single number shared between half a dozen phones is a good indicator of local leadership, but local leadership wouldn't be trusted with this.

So when I'd occasionally stumble across some local leadership, lift the numbers off their phones, and find that there are a small number of people they're all in contact with, I know I've found the core Triad members responsible for liaising between all their different affiliate gangs. The kind of people who'd be trusted to handle their Parahuman trafficking operation.

From there, we sent those numbers off to the Think Tank, who sent us back names – both real and false – as well as photographs that I memorised with just as much care and attention as I'd given to the numbers.

So, tonight, when I saw Stepan Valeryevich, former Bratva enforcer and known Triad member, deep in conversation with a local gang leader, I quickly slipped into the storm drain to cross the road and snuck my way into the folds of his thick wool coat. From there, he spoke to a couple more people – all local gang leaders – about how their work is going, and whether they've made any headway against our people.

Each meeting was conducted on the street, tucked away in dark corners, and each was conducted on Stepan's terms. This Nightclub is an outlier – too loud and too bright – and that probably means Stepan isn't the one who set this up. The next person up the chain did.

From the way the noise drops out, I can tell we've been led into a backroom. The light hasn't gone, though, which makes me think it must look out onto the dancefloor somehow. Soundproofed glass? Is that a thing?

Stepan's exchanging a few words with someone, but given that the words are a drink order, I doubt it's who he came here to meet. He slumps down into a couch, and I feel my immaterial form pressed against his back as he leans into the cushions, drumming his fingers on the armrest.

From the curve of his spine, I can tell he's looking up at the ceiling, so I take the chance to form my tail and push it out the base of his coat, finding the patch of darkness beneath his seat and pulling me along with it, my form flowing like liquid until I'm comfortably nestled beneath the chair, peering out at the room.

Like I thought, it looks out onto the dance floor through a pane of glass, and I have to flinch back as the pattern of strobing lights shifts, bathing the room for a brief second before turning their attention back to the writhing mass of people in the main club area. There's a girl in a dress peering intently at the window, her eyelids shifting as she gets a good look at her make-up. Must be a one-way mirror.

I can only see part of the room itself – a door, a black armchair opposite the one I'm nestled under, and a small table in-between them – but it's enough to see the door opening to reveal one of the club's staff as he brings in small glass of some clear liquid. I can hear Stepan knocking it back the moment he's alone, then the sound of shifting leather as he makes himself comfortable, one of his boots disappearing from view as he cocks his leg.

He doesn't have to wait for long; soon the door is opened again, as the same staff member lets in a stocky, muscular, woman in tight black pants and a crisp crimson blouse, worn beneath an elegant fur coat. She has a boxer's face; her nose has clearly been broken and reset more than once.

"Rusalka," Stepan greets her, rising from his seat before being waved back down. The name is familiar; one of the Triad's senior capes, who began her life in the Bratva, same as Stepan. I saw her at their meeting, but she's out of costume now.

"Valeryevich," she returns the greeting, exchanging a few words with him as I quickly realise I have absolutely no idea what she's saying. She's… talking in an entirely different language – they both are – and I haven't even got the faintest idea what they're saying.

Damnit, I hadn't even considered this! Stepan is clearly making a report to her, but he might as well be stringing together random vowels for all I can understand it!

Wait, I think I recognised that! He said 'Cinderblock,' and I don't think they've made us. He's spent all day talking to the gang leaders in this part of Seattle, and they've been telling him about the progress they've made against our people – Cinderblock's people included. He's making his report to his superiors.

Rusalka sits there taking it all in, slouched back in her seat with the easy confidence of someone who's absolutely assured of their strength. She doesn't interrupt, not even to nod in agreement, until Stepan's report is done. Then she leans forward in her seat, reaches into the folds of her coat, and passes Stepan a folded-up piece of paper.

She talks to him, her face a picture of seriousness, and I catch another pair of words I recognise, though I don't remember where from. Taika Maru. Soon more words follow; 'Steel Skull' – the mercenary responsible for bringing the trafficked Parahumans into the city – and Brunei – the foreign city where the Triad will hand off their 'cargo' to their clients.

Lastly, my heart almost skips a beat as Rusalka says 'South Horton Street' in words that I can actually understand. The moment Stepan puts his other foot down, I slip a finger out from underneath the couch and pour myself into the shadows beneath his pants. It's distasteful, but this is the best lead I've found since we started, and I have to stop this if I can.

There are ten people coming into this city, kept asleep in the backs of shipping containers. They'll wake up in a strange and foreign land, scared and alone, without any memory of how they got there or what happens next.

They might remember who they were before being taken, but it wouldn't matter. Their past lives would be every bit as out of reach as mine is.